Web Design Hacks to Simplify your Life

When designing a website there are some tips and tricks that you should familiarize yourself with. These tips and tricks can save you time and hassle when it comes to designing a website. Of course, we always suggest having a professional web developer create your site.

Global changes can be made easily by adding an asterisk as the selector in the code. This will apply global changes to the entire page, regardless of what the change is. While this is great during design, you should not keep this in your live code because of issues it could cause.

Character count is another easy to use hack that can simplify the web design process. 45-75 characters are standardly the easiest lines to read. Use the asterisk tip to check the format and fix if necessary.

Smushit is a digital image resizer that is handy if images are having a hard time loading quickly, or at all. This simple tool will make it easier to load images on digital devices as well. If this doesn’t work for you, give ImageOptim, another easy to use image resizer, a try.

For exporting images from Photoshop that don’t need to be transparent – use filetype 8bit PNG. It retains the quality without the large file size.

Use GuideGuide, a photoshop template that can help create columns and rows, and make your page custom without being too difficult to create.

Visit Colour Lovers, a design site that can help with color schemes, designs and ideas. Adobe Kuler is a design suite that can also be helpful when deciding these things.

One of the hardest things to figure out is typography. Typecast is an app that helps you work out websites rich in typography. This app allows you to rapidly build and edit typography palettes.

For free font, visit Font Squirrel, or Google Fonts for hundreds of free fonts that are top notch.

Go slow. Take your time to develop your ideas and design them out so that you can be sure you are getting not only what you want, but what you need in a design.

Pretend to be a user. Plan the flow of the website for the user. If it doesn’t make sense to you, chances are good that it doesn’t make sense to your intended user. The easier the user interface, the better the experience.

If designing your site in Photoshop, be sure to name your layers very specifically. This will help things to move more smoothly and quickly.

Get rid of what you don’t need. If you have layers you aren’t using, or other designs you aren’t fond of throw them out.

Label everything! Layers are just one thing that you should label carefully, also label folders, designs, etc. to be sure you have everything in place to complete the job correctly and with ease.

Save everything. Always.

Use Pinterest or other creative sites for ideas and brainstorming. If you are working on a design for a client, try moodboards to get a better idea of their feelings and ideas for design.

Talk to the client at the beginning. This is perhaps one of the most important steps, because the client will usually want to be a part of the process from the beginning.

Work during your downtime. Your ideas, thoughts and processes should be at least partially focused on the creative work you are doing.

Dribbble is a website that allows for peer review. Sometimes it just takes another person with a creative mind to show you where you are wrong, or even where you are right. This site allows for you to get peer critiquing which is great for business.

Optimize for SEO. SEO is important for bringing people to the site. Without optimization it doesn’t much matter how good of a design you have created. You may have to download an optimization program, or a company that can take care of this for you, especially if you, as a designer, have not been trained on this particular part of web design.

Of course, these are just a few of the web design tips you can find to help you make your job as a designer just a little easier.